Clean coal contracts

Mitsui Babcock has won a £30 million-plus maintenance contract at the Drax coal-fired power station in Selby, North Yorkshire, shortly after winning a £6 million NOx reduction contract at the station. The maintenance contract, which will last for four years, covers main boiler outage and pressure parts.

The contract is worth an initial £6 million, and is extendable to over £30 million, the company says. ‘We have had a strong relationship with Drax since the plant was built and have been resident on site for more than 20 years,’ comments managing director of Mitsui Babcock Europe, Bob Nimmo. ‘This new contract award is testimony to our expertise in this field.’

The NOx contract was one of a cluster announced last month, which also included projects at EDF Energy’s Cottam power station and the Didcot Power Station in Oxfordshire. The projects, worth a total of £14 million, will help the stations comply with the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive, which will control permissible levels of NOx from 2008.

The contracts cover the installation of Boosted Over-Fire Air (OFA) systems on the plants’ furnaces. ‘We contracted Mitsui Babcock not only because the technology will help us achieve the NOx abatement targets set by LCPD but also because of its ability to deliver increased fuel efficiency, minimum plant disruption and cost effectiveness,’ explains Peter McGriskin, EDF Energy’s director of thermal production.

The DTI is to provide 65% of the funding for a £1.2 million project being carried out by Mitsui Babcock to install clean coal technology on every coal-fired power station in the UK. The study is looking at the feasibility of retrofitting advanced supercritical boiler and turbine technology and carbon dioxide capture and storage equipment.

The former uses steam at high temperature and pressure to boost plant cycle efficiency, making more electricity from less coal and generating less CO2; the latter will allow 90-95% of all CO2 produced to be captured. ‘Coal must be at the heart of a balanced energy policy,’ says Mitsui Babcock chief executive Ian Miller.

‘No previous study has looked at the feasibility of retrofitting the entire UK fleet with supercritical technology. Capture and storage technology has come a long way, and now needs to be studied for its economic viability.’

The technology also has significant export potential, Miller points out: China relies on coal for a large proportion of its power generation capacity.